Recent Blog Posts

  Child Identity Theft: How to Secure Your Kids Against The #1 Fastest-Growing Identity Theft   Shiloh Puckett has had 17 credit cards, been approved for a $42,000 loan, and owes thousands of dollars in credit card bills. Shiloh was just 10 years old and had been in debt since she was 5 because her identity was stolen -- in this case by her own mother. These type of circumstances have been occurring for decades but seldom mentioned on the news or other media likely because it is not seen as exciting or news worthy as the credit card theft attacks on the major retailers. Half a million kids have their identities stolen every year in the United States. This case may even sound like an extreme circumstance, but child identity theft -- by family members and strangers alike - continues to grow at record speeds in the United States. The number of complaints reported to the FTC increass every year. Meanwhile, child identity theft cases doubled again in 2013 for children age 5 and younger. Children are being targeted [...]

  Smile Whitening Secrets Tooth whitening is a very popular cosmetic dental process today. An estimated 10 million Americans spend over $1.5 billion dollars each year on tooth-whitening products. And it's not surprising why. Whiter teeth can give you more confidence, more sex appeal, more "Hollywood glam" - heck, it can even translate into a better career and take years off your face. A healthy, white smile can add a great boost to your self-esteem while providing extra benefits to overall health. Plus, removing unsightly coffee, wine and soda stains from your teeth is so easy, there's really no reason not too - unless you're a glutton for punishment. People Have Been Whitening Their Teeth Since the 1800s! You may be surprised to learn that tooth-whitening techniques have been around for over 150 years. According to the American Dental Association (ADA), oxalic acid (the compound in spinach that might make you feel like you have a film on your teeth after you eat it) was used as a tooth-whitening agent back in 1877, and in 1884, tooth bleaching was performed [...]

  U.S. Life Expectancy Reaches a New High U.S. life expectancy has reached new heights of 78.8 years being the average "Mortality in the Unitied States", according to a government report released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These findings indicate that U.S. life expectancy has increased by nearly 3 years in less than a decade. U.S. life expectancy has reached a new high of 78.5 years … which is still shorter than life expectancies in about 30 other countries. Researchers are attributing the increase to a drop in death rates in almost all of the categories of leading causes of death. Topping the chart of U.S. fatalities are heart disease and cancer. Both showed a drop in death rates, heart disease falling by nearly 5 percent and cancer deaths by nearly 2 percent. A decrease in diabetes-related deaths followed heart disease, dropping by 4 percent. One of the biggest declines was in HIV death rates, which showed a drop of 10 percent. The one increase in death rates was [...]

  How to Keep Your Kid’s Mind Active This Summer… and Why You Should Summer vacation -- a little over two months of free time and fun for your kids -- but that doesn’t mean they should lose everything they learned over the school year. If your kids don’t keep their minds active over the summer, they can lose 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math skills and nearly a whole reading level! The long, lazy days of summer pose a risk for school-aged children and it’s even been coined as “summer brain drain.” Research has shown that if your child’s brain remains stagnant without challenge over the summer months, they could lose, on average, 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in math skills and nearly a whole reading level. Other studies have shown that on the average students will score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation compared to the same tests they took at the beginning of the summer. Parents can make a big difference in the knowledge their kids retain by setting examples [...]

  Do You Eat a Lot of Cooked Food? Why Adding More Raw Foods to Your Diet is a Smart Move Asking most people whether they eat a lot of cooked food may sound like a silly question. After all, we’re conditioned to cook all of our meat thoroughly to avoid bacteria and parasites, and even our dairy products and juices are pasteurized. When food is cooked valuable enzymes are destroyed. For many, raw food in their diet consists of an occasional salad or piece of fruit, as even most veggies on Americans’ dinner plates are of the cooked variety. So what’s the problem, you may now be wondering? Raw plant and animal foods (such as raw milk) are loaded with beneficial enzymes for your body. (Enzymes are actually special proteins that act as catalysts for the chemical reactions that occur to keep your body functioning.) However, enzymes begin to be destroyed at temperatures above 110-115 degrees. So if your food is cooked, pasteurized or processed, it will contain no enzymes whatsoever. "When you cook something, you destroy the enzymes," [...]

  Probiotics: What Are They and Are You Getting Enough? Probiotics, which mean “for life,’ are beneficial bacteria that can assist your body with digestion and help protect you from harmful bacteria. Probiotics help keep the bad bacteria in your gut in check, assisting in healthy digestion and much more. There are, in fact, trillions of bacteria in your digestive tract, but not all of them are good for you. One reason why probiotics are so important is because they help keep the balance of good vs. bad bacteria in check. Without them, bad bacteria would overwhelm your system, causing your cells to miss out on important nutrients and function poorly. As written in the book "Digestive Wellness", probiotics lower the pH of your colon and kill disease-causing microbes. They also produce vitamins A, B and K, protect you from illness, enhance peristalsis, and make lactase for milk digestion. Probiotics also ferment dietary fiber, producing important short-chained fatty acids, such as butyric acid, which in low levels has been associated with ulcerative colitis, colon cancer, active colitis and inflammatory bowel [...]